8
years ago! Last week the United Nations called it a national emergency!

On
October 8, 1998
the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee (TDRC) held a press conference on behalf
of hundreds of organizations across the country, including a
Thunder Bay
anti-poverty organization.We
declared homelessness a national disaster.The
disaster declaration launched a national campaign that called for two things:
first, disaster relief monies to help communities deal with the immediate
problem of homelessness.Second, we
called for – the One Percent Solution – a commitment from all three levels
of government to spend an additional 1% of their budgets on affordable housing.

In
1993, the Conservative government quietly cancelled our national housing
program.Following the federal
download of housing to the provinces, and in many cases another download to the
municipalities, in a mere five years we went from a rich history of building
affordable housing in Canada to a dramatic increase in homelessness that
resulted in our Declaration.The
history from that 1998 Declaration until today is a history of significant
political wins on the housing and homelessness front.Given the current political climate, we have no choice but to keep
building on those wins.Let me
briefly outline some of those wins:

·With the October 8th
Declaration, the Toronto Star ran front-page headlines and stories on
homelessness for 11 days straight.They
assigned a journalist – Catherine Dunphy, to cover homelessness full-time –
a first in
Canada
.

·TDRC’s
State of Emergency Declaration was taken to the United Nations in
Geneva
by two Canadian NGOs.The United
Nations took the Declaration seriously.Both the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Committee on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights remarked on
Canada
’s record on housing, poverty, and the treatment of First Nations peoples.Here is what the latter UN Committee said right after our 1998
Declaration:

“The
Committee is gravely concerned that such a wealthy country as
Canada
has allowed the problem of homelessness and inadequate housing to grow to such
proportions that the mayors of
Canada
’s 10 largest cities have now declared homelessness a national disaster.”

·Two national housing and homelessness
networks were launched.When Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman invited people from across the country to
hear Dr. Anne Golden present the findings of his Mayor’s Task Force on
Homelessness – Taking Responsibility for Homelessness (aka the Golden
Report) – TDRC, community activists and front-line workers took over city
council chambers and we formed the National Housing and Homelessness Network –
the NHHN.Around the same time, TDRC
also joined with national organizations to form the
National Coalition on Housing and Homelessness.

·In 1999 a federal Minister Responsible
for Homelessness was appointed.Prime Minister Chrétien appointed federal Minister of Labour Claudette
Bradshaw to the new portfolio, Minister Responsible for Homelessness – probably
the first in the world – a federal minister responsible for homelessness.I should add that Ms. Bradshaw hated being called Minister ‘responsible
for homelessness’ because in fact, the longer she was minister, the more it
remained true.The existence of the
‘Homelessness Minister’ and in particular her national tour, did make
visible the fact that a long list of ministers with responsibilities for
housing, including Diane Marleau, Alfonso Gagliano, David Collenette, John
McCallum, Steve Mahoney, and even Joe Fontana, were never given a mandate or a
budget to restart a national housing program.In fact, the federal Liberals used to boast that they would never get
back into the housing business.

·Disaster Relief monies were announced.Claudette Bradshaw did announce federal disaster relief monies – the Supporting Community Partnership
Initiatives (SCPI).Hundreds
of millions of dollars were targeted to alleviate homelessness, albeit only in
large urban centres, which perpetuated the myth that homelessness was only a big
city problem.However SCPI did
provide much needed assistance to agencies providing relief to people who were
homeless.As my friend and colleague
Michael Shapcott says “the monies made people more comfortable in their state
of homelessness, but no less homeless.”SCPI
was renewed in 2003 for three years and again for one year. Its future is now in
the hands of this new government.

·Affordable Housing Framework Agreement
signed.In 2001, amidst a snowstorm in
Quebec City
and protestors from across the country freezing outside the Chateau, the federal
government announced a housing agreement that would lead to federal partnerships
with the provinces and territories.Although
the program has been mired with difficulties and it is far from being any kind
of a national housing program – it did bring the federal Liberals back into
the housing arena.

Despite
these political wins, abundant evidence across the country clearly shows that
the housing shortage has worsened, waiting lists for affordable housing have
lengthened and homelessness has increased.In
addition, the racialization and feminization of poverty has meant that women and
children, African Canadians and First Nations peoples, are today worse off then
they were in 1998.

Today’s
displaced Canadians, i.e. the homeless, remain economic refugees in their own
country and they should be considered as such.

Let’s
not call them couch-surfers, or ‘chronics’, street people, hard-core, or
hard-to-house.People who have been
de-housed remain so much longer today than previously, and it is not by choice
or through their personal fault.We
have a serious shortage of affordable housing in this country and it is getting
worse.The longer this is
perpetuated, the more serious the consequences will become.For example:

·Hunger is now the primary health problem
that Street Nurses confront.We
refer to this as a major health concern, a medical emergency – or a hotspot.Hunger is epidemic.The
recent provincial regulation changes to the Special Diet campaign removed the
ability for thousands of people to receive additional food monies to treat that
hunger.

·Inside emergency shelters there are more
children, more seniors, more people with disabilities, more people with chronic
health problems – and now more people requiring palliative care, than there
have ever been before.At least two
shelters in
Canada
have been forced to set up some form of hospice or palliative care for people
who are homeless.Yes, people are
dying homeless. Coroners
continue to label many such deaths as death from ‘natural causes’, as if
it’s natural to be dying on the street or in a 600 bed shelter.I continue to remain astounded that the high number of homeless deaths in
Toronto
,
Ottawa
, and even
Sudbury
, with the sound research of Dr. Stephen Hwang, has not yet led to an official
inquiry by the office of the Chief Coroner of
Ontario
, whose mission statement is after all “We speak for the dead to protect the
living.”

·Disease, and the potential for disease,
is enormous.Phrases like
‘plagues, scourges, emerging viruses and pests’ may sound like its coming
from another century, but it is the best descriptor of what homeless people are
facing today.Disease onslaughts are
cyclical in nature, but they more frequently erupt when social disasters like
unemployment, overcrowding, hunger and homelessness devastate a community or a
country.For example - shelters have
had to deal with deadly tuberculosis outbreaks.Shelter workers have had to testify at inquests into the tuberculosis
deaths in their shelters.Cases of
active TB have even been reported among staff in at least one
Toronto
shelter.

·And there are new and emerging diseases.And believe me, the worst is yet to come.Some shelters have had to enact quarantines – when the highly
infectious
Norwalk
virus hit their population.During
SARS, front line workers were terrified that SARS would enter the shelter
system.They knew that ‘home
quarantine’ plans would be impossible to implement in shelters and it would be
totally inadequate.There is no
surprise that these facilities are the sites that are the most concerned and the
most willing to prepare for an upcoming pandemic flu – if they were given the
direction, the information or the funding to do so.

·The term ‘pests’ does not begin to
capture the nightmare of bedbugs.Many
shelters and rooming houses are infested with them throughout
Toronto
.Bedbugs are more than a
‘nuisance’, which is what public health authorities call them.They are a very serious health problem, which take a toll both physically
and mentally.Bedbugs are a stubborn
pest that can live up to 12 months without a human feed.

This
is all just a sampling.I could
describe many similarly horrific rooming house conditions and other issues that
impact people sleeping outdoors.

Over
the last 2 years I have been invited to a number of communities across the
country, to learn from local experts about what their issues are. I have been
startled to learn about the prevalence of 3 problems that I thought were unique
to
Toronto
.

1.Many municipalities have had to sign
contracts with motels to ensure there are enough emergency shelter spaces in
their community for homeless families with children.One
Toronto
school has been pressured to put a cap on the number of homeless children they
will allow in their school.With
only one exception, every community I have visited in the last two and a half
years has not been able to meet the emergency shelter needs of families and
children.

2.Many of the communities I have visited
also report a high homeless death rate – which should be cause for concern for
public health officials, for epidemiologists, for city officials, and as I’ve
mentioned, for the Chief Coroner of Ontario as well as other regional coroners.
The problem by and large goes ignored and unstudied.

3.Signs of discrimination.I thought the vicious NIMBY (not in my back yard) people were only in
Toronto
– this is not so.Communities have
told me that NIMBY people target the housing projects they try to build,
projects that would house people with mental health problems or refugees or even
poor families.We’ve also seen
other examples of discrimination:by-laws
making it illegal for homeless people to sleep in certain places, provincial
legislation that criminalizes panhandling, new government funding criteria that
prohibits the delivery of ‘survival supplies’ like sleeping bags or food to
people living outside.Then there
are the derogatory media references about homeless or poor people.In his May 8th column,
Toronto
SUN columnist Peter Worthington wrote, and I quote “
Toronto
’s worst blight, which colours attitudes of visitors and inhabitants, is the
horde of bums who infest the city.
Toronto
panhandles(sic) are not the truly down-and-out, but
mostly like predators.” Astonishingly, he went on to write “Where do the
homeless go if you clean up the streets?Probably
they go home.”

These
are all dangerous developments that threaten human life and dignity and
absolutely, it must be a wake-up call to all of us as activists, front-line
workers and policy makers.We need
to confront what Josephine Grey calls the “willful ignorance” of our
governments to deal with this problem.Josephine
has testified before the UN in
Geneva
more than once.

So,
we’ve had 8 years to make a dent in the homelessness disaster. We have had a
few wins over those years, but the situation keeps getting worse, with growing
numbers of people facing desperation and despair.So, the obvious question is why?It
doesn’t have to be that way.

Professor
Ursula Franklin suggests that natural disasters such as the 1985
Mexico City
earthquakes that killed 10,000 people, evokes solidarity and tolerance.We have witnessed other landmark Canadian versions of the earthquake, for
example the
Eastern Ontario
and
Quebec
ice storm, the
Manitoba
floods, the
Mississauga
train derailment.All of these
catastrophes led to both a shelter and a re-housing response.

In
such a disaster, political and social divisions are put aside and people focus
on providing solutions to the injured and the homeless while at the same time
addressing prevention, which, in the
Mexico
case – included improved use of geological knowledge and the role of the
City’s subway layout in the amplification of the shock waves.

The
Ontario
and federal government responded to SARS with “disaster relief” - $20
million dollars – for hospital relief and for a tourism campaign, and then
they commissioned several thick reports.It
remains to be seen if the recommendations will be taken seriously. Today,
governments are creating emergency pandemic preparedness plans that emphasize
the hierarchy of the chain of command rather than major prevention efforts.

Governments
in
Canada
still do not acknowledge homelessness, as a legitimate political earthquake.If they did we would see an organized tri-level government response to
homelessness and it is not unrealistic to expect that.

Only
last week the United Nations Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights
released their report on
Canada
.In it they went farther than they
ever have before, calling Canada’s homelessness disaster and housing crisis a
“national emergency” and calling on federal, provincial and territorial
governments to meet their international obligations by “reinstating or
increasing, where necessary, social housing programmes for those in need”.The Geneva-based Committee’s concluding observations, released Monday,
May 22nd, state in Paragraph 62:

62. The Committee reiterates its recommendation that the federal,
provincial and territorial governments address homelessness and inadequate
housing as a national emergency by reinstating or increasing, where necessary,
social housing programmes for those in need, improving and properly enforcing
anti-discrimination legislation in the field of housing, increasing shelter
allowances and social assistance rates to realistic levels, and providing
adequate support services for persons with disabilities. The Committee urges the
State party to implement a national strategy for the reduction of homelessness
that includes measurable goals and timetables, consultation and collaboration
with affected communities, complaints procedures, and transparent accountability
mechanisms, in keeping with Covenant standards.

Yes,
there has been willful ignorance on the part of our government to deal with this
problem.But it becomes harder for
governments to ignore an issue like homelessness when it stares them in the
face.Governments in
Canada
can only shut their eyes to the issue for so long.We now have the International Community tapping Canada on one shoulder,
and you and I as local activists hammering away on the other, eventually, Canada
will have to wake up to the problem.

A
few decades ago a woman couldn’t afford a hospital birth. She lay on the table
and her husband helped her deliver the baby and cut the umbilical cord with a
knife.When Beric told me this story
it was hard for me to grasp its relevancy.He
went on to explain that we now understand and we know the need for a public
Medicare system.He went on to
remind me that a baby was born to a
Tent
City
couple but that birth, even in a publicly funded Medicare system, did not occur
in a society that also valued their need for housing.We expect and we demand a fully funded Medicare program.We must also expect and we must also demand a fully funded housing
program.

In
1970 Tommy Douglas said, “We need a million new homes in
Canada
”.Now, I don’t know the exact
number we need now, but I do know this, we are going to have to fight for
them.

You
all know how we got our national health program – Medicare.The Tommy Douglas story, recently shown on CBC, reminded us that it took
a real fight.

But
do you know how we got our national housing program?Surprisingly most people don’t. I didn’t, until recently.I was a Street Nurse in 1993 when they cancelled the national housing
programme and I was not aware.

Let
me read you something from the CBC archives from a 1946 radio broadcast.

“On news
roundup, we brought to you reports about operations carried out by the services.
There was Operation Muskox, Operation Mustard and Operation North. Tonight we
have a new one, something quite different. Muskox took 83 days to reach its
objective, this one took one day. It’s called Operation Kildare.Don Pringle of the CBC tells you about it from
Ottawa
:”

“The smoke of
the battle has cleared away on Operation Kildare.Well actually there wasn’t any battle.The veterans and their families who took over two CWAC (Canadian
Women’s Army Corp) barracks in
Ottawa
met with no opposition.And now
they are comfortably settled in their new homes and apparently intend to stay.Kildare Barracks and Annex are two houses of the old fashioned
mansion-type that are not built anymore.There’s
a lot of room in them. In the Annex
on chapel street for instance, there are three rooms in each of which you could
hold a dance, a concert or a good-sized bizarre.I had a talk this afternoon with FE Hanratty who directed the occupation
forces.He says that veterans were
fed up with the red tape and procrastination of officialdom and they couldn’t
wait.Well it’s true the veterans
and their families wasted no time.The
last CWAC moved out of the barracks on Monday and they came in Tuesday.Over a week ago, the newly formed Veterans Housing League marched on
Parliament Hill.And last Friday,
according to their leader, they presented the plea of 27 desperate families, to
the City of
Ottawa
.Of these 27 families, 21 are now
housed in Kildare Barracks.Some
have three rooms, some have two. About half have private baths, and five
families occupy what are, to all practical purposes, self contained apartments.Mr. Hanratty says they are willing to pay a reasonable rent and this is
what he proposes:The rent should
not be based on space occupied, but on ability to pay.And it should not exceed one fifth of the family’s income.The average income, by the way, of these families is around $127 a
month.One man, a veteran of the
first Great War, lives on a $60 pension.So,
says Hanratty, he should pay $12 a month, no more.Well that’s how it stands now.The
veterans are in, and for the moment squatter’s rights are respected. Kildare
Barracks, by the way, is just across the street from another well-known
Ottawa
dwelling. Laurier House, as you know, is occupied by our Prime Minister.This is Don Pringle speaking from
Ottawa
.”(CBC radio archives
courtesy of CBC)

I’m
telling that piece of history because people in
Canada
once fought, they fought very hard for a national housing programme.The housing crisis fought by World War II veterans was not limited to
Ottawa
.Protests by vets and their
families also took place in
Vancouver
and there were protests across the country.Women’s’ groups joined in.It
led to empty military buildings being freed up for housing; it led to a federal
agency ‘Wartime Housing Ltd.” that built 19,000 temporary rental homes over
4 years.It led to the creation of
the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, now the Canada Mortgage and
Housing Corporation, and what came to be our national housing programme.

Our
housing programme was taken from us and we have to get it back.

The
last time
Canada
had a Conservative government; it was a majority government from 1984 to 1993.
During that time our national housing programme was destroyed.There were almost $2 billion in funding cuts over the decade, and then
all new spending was cancelled in 1993.

The
Liberal government, elected in 1993, was equally bad on their housing policy
during the 1990s.Further cuts were
made to housing funding, most national housing programs were downloaded to the
provinces and territories in 1996, and the role of Canada Mortgage and Housing
Corporation was further eroded in 1998.

Coming
here to
Thunder Bay
, you can’t help but notice the Sleeping Giant.My understanding of the legend is that the sleeping giant came about
because the white man took away the people’s silver.Just like our national housing program -that’s what happened in 1993, the silver was stolen from the people.But, as the legend goes, eventually the sleeping giant will awake.

And
just like the sleeping giant, the people have to arise in the face of the
growing despair and desperation around them.Sooner or later, the Canadian government has to wake up and be forced to
do the right thing and join the rest of the G-8 nations and recreate a national
housing programme.